No Man's Sky didn't have 'a great PR strategy,' Sony exec says

No Man's Sky is a decent game, but one that was probably doomed from the beginning because of a neverending series of hype. Whether the fault of the media or developer Hello Games' chief Sean Murray is debatable, but what isn't is that the PR strategy - whatever it was - fell flat.

That's the sentiment of Sony Worldwide president Shuhei Yoshida, who said that he sees why some people may not have enjoyed the game.

"I understand some of the criticisms especially Sean Murray is getting, because he sounded like he was promising more features in the game from day one," Yoshida told Eurogamer from the Tokyo Game Show. "It wasn't a great PR strategy, because he didn't have a PR person helping him, and in the end he is an indie developer. But he says their plan is to continue to develop No Man's Sky features and such, and I'm looking forward to continuing to play the game."

Yoshida said he played the game prior to launch and then again after the day one patch, and really enjoyed the game. He said he did so particularly to understand how developers struggle to get a game to the place they are happy with it. He added that he thinks the game is still good for the PlayStation brand, despite its issues. "I am super happy with the game actually, and I'm amazed with the sales the game has gotten."

The game has been plagued with performance issues, particularly on PC, and Hello Games has continued to scramble to fix them. But that hasn't kept players from trying to get refunds. Valve has honored refund requests through Steam, but Sony has been denying them because Hello Games continues to issue a "rolling program of patches" designed to fix problems, according to emails received by disgruntled fans.

And while Yoshida may be spouting the company line on game sales, the game has seen the number of concurrent players drop 89 percent since launch.